Sri Lankan government – end the brutal attacks on protesting students and workers!

Add your name to our petition using the form below. Socialist Students will be in touch with an email containing more information on how you can help protestors and students in Sri Lanka.

On July 9 in Sri Lanka this year, protestors from all around the country descended on the capital Colombo and stormed the Presidential Palace, ending the presidency of the corrupt and infamous Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

This came after months of mass protests and mass strike actions across Sri Lanka amid deep economic crisis and a skyrocketing of the cost of living for workers and youth.

But the movement isn’t over. Since July 9, vicious repression has been carried out by the interim government determined to drive through further neoliberal austerity measures to make the masses pay for Sri Lanka’s debt crisis. In order to carry through those measures, the government also increased its repression against all opposition. Every single peaceful protest organised by students and activists is brutally attacked by state forces. The leader of Inter University Students Federation (IUSF), along with other student leaders and protesters, are still being held under the draconian legislation, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

The issues which blight the lives of youth and students in Britain – rising prices and falling living standards, all driven by the profit-first system of capitalism – are the same issues the movement in Sri Lanka is fighting back against.

Socialist Students says that the only way for workers and young people to secure a decent future, free of poverty and oppression, is to unite internationally in the struggle against capitalism, and to fight for socialist change.

We the undersigned stand in solidarity with workers and students who have been arrested and detained by the Sri Lankan regime. We demand that the Sri Lankan government:

• Release IUSF student leaders, Kalum Mudannayake, Dilshan Harshana and Kasun Thivanka
• Stop the attack on all protestors
• Drop all charges on protestors
• Repeal PTA – and all other oppressive laws
• Allow freedom of assembly, free speech, and freedom to dissent